Time To Prepare: Rising Sea Levels Threaten Connecticut Coast

Tropical Storm Irene hammered the houses in the low-lying Cosey Beach area of East Haven last August. Now, according to town officials, most of those homes are being rebuilt.

This is understandable. But is it wise?

Residents of Cosey Beach Avenue are among 3.7 million Americans who live within a few feet of the high-tide line — some of the East Haven homes are on or over the high-tide line — and risk being hit by more coastal flooding as seas rise due to global warming, according to a recent report from the nonprofit research and journalism group Climate Central.

The report said global warming has raised the world's sea level about 8 inches since 1880, and the rate of rise is accelerating. A rising sea level means a greater chance of devastating floods. It is frightening to think what might have happened if Irene had been, say, a Class 3 hurricane.

Whether or not it is being caused by heat-trapping pollution spewed into the sky, as most climate scientists now believe, the planet is getting warmer and sea levels are rising. Estimates of how much the seas will rise in this century vary from a few inches to a few feet.

Take the conservative estimate: A rise of even a few inches can add a lot of water to a storm surge, endangering homes, coastal wetlands, beaches, highways, railroad tracks and sewage treatment plants along the shore.

Roads in some shoreline towns that used to flood every few years now flood a few times a year, the Stamford Advocate has reported. It's mostly nuisance flooding now; it could well become worse as sea levels rise. The Climate Central estimate says more than 8,000 Connecticut homes are vulnerable to coastal flooding.

Coping With Rising Waters

The question is what Connecticut is going to do about it. Until now, virtually the only ones talking about sea level rise have been environmentalists, notably The Nature Conservancy and Connecticut Fund for the Environment. The conservancy has developed a computer-based Coastal Resilience Tool (http://bit.ly/GHTNm3) that helps communities analyze the effects of different flooding scenarios, with the goal of lessening the impact.

Now the state has put a toe in the water, so to speak.

A Climate Change and Shoreline Preservation Task Force has begun studying how the shoreline can adapt to rising sea levels. State Rep. James Albis of East Haven said the group will try to assemble as much hard data as possible and look at best practices in other states to determine the best way to cope with rising waters.

Also, a bill passed by the General Assembly asks planners to consider "the potential impact of a rise in sea level, coastal flooding and erosion patterns" on development along the coast and discourages the construction of new sea walls where there are more environmentally friendly options available. But the law does not give the state the power to make dramatic changes such as taking property by eminent domain.

End National Flood Insurance

What may force more focused thinking about this is an effort in Washington to reform the wasteful National Flood Insurance Program. That cannot happen soon enough; it is crazy for taxpayers to keep replacing structures in highly vulnerable shoreline areas.

Is Cosey Beach Avenue such a place? Will it become one? We must think about what has heretofore been unthinkable along most of the Connecticut coast. Will the time come when some now inhabited areas become uninhabitable? We are talking about people's homes. For towns, shoreline homes are major sources of property tax revenue — assuming the property doesn't wash away.

The traditional answer for many homeowners over the years was to build a sea wall. But the reason this is addressed in the new state law is that sea walls make sense in some places, such as the Millstone nuclear power plants or cemeteries, but not others. In the wrong place, a sea wall can hasten erosion and, if breached, make flooding worse.

It is a complex and emotional issue, but better to start the discussion now. Sea-level forecasting is getting more precise, and the forecasts are not promising.